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This article contains Silo season 2 spoilers through episode 2.
Adapting a story from one medium to another is never an easy task. There are usually some things glossed over, some things changed, and some things left out entirely. But as long as the heart of the narrative is still there, there’s a lot that an audience is willing to forgive in most cases. Based on the Silo book series beginning with Wool by Hugh Howey, season 2 of Silo is not a perfect adaptation by any means. It differs from the books more than the previous season did, though not in a bad way at all. However, even though this season may not be an exact replica of the story told in the novels, it still manages to give an unexpected nod to the book series that inspired it.
Season 2 continues where season 1 left off and adapts the latter half of the book Wool. This section of the book differs from the others in that once Juliette leaves the silo, the chapters go back and forth between her silo (Silo 18) and the nearly-abandoned one she discovers (Silo 17). Each chapter focuses on a silo at a time, often forcing the reader to wait a couple of chapters to find out what happens next to Juliette in Silo 17 or to the growing rebellion in Silo 18.
Similarly, season 2 of Silo begins the same way. Episode 1 focuses solely on Juliette fighting for her survival as she finds her way into Silo 17. The second episode then takes us back to Silo 18 for the entirety of the episode.
During a press day for season 2, Den of Geek asked Silo showrunner Graham Yost whether or not this was an intentional homage to the books, or just a happy accident that came along as they were developing the story this season. “It was a happy accident in that we decided to start the season that way,” Yost says. “We do get into things toward the end and you’ll eventually see the final episode where we are going, ‘bang, bang, bang.’ But the big thing was, we quickly decided in the writers room that we wanted to start with Juliette.”
According to Yost, the writers had a “crazy idea” about following the structure of the book and alternating episodes for “four or five episodes,” but ultimately realized that it could ”become annoying” to have a television show formatted that way. But even if they couldn’t do it for all of the episodes, they could do it for the first two, and then “settle into just a regular story where we’re going back and forth between these two [silos].”
It’s often challenging to adapt formatting elements across mediums, like gameplay from video games, or in this case the chapter structure from a book, without it feeling odd or out of place in the new medium. By using the first two episodes as chapters, however, Yost and the season 2 writers came up with a fun and unexpected way to pay homage to the books without making it feel forced or unnatural to watch as a TV show.
Yost says that author Hugh Howey and his wife Shea love the season, and that’s “the best review we can get.” Just because a story might change slightly as it’s adapted, doesn’t mean that the heart of the original isn’t still there, and this nod to Wool in Silo is further proof of that.
New episodes of Silo season 2 premiere Fridays on Apple TV+, culminating with the final on January 17, 2025.
The post Silo Season 2 Pays Homage to Wool in an Unexpected Way appeared first on Den of Geek.
